Whenver
a website posts an FAQ section, it's usually because the webmaster
feels
that there is enough reason to do so. Perhaps he gets a lot of
e-mails
with the same questions over and over. Or maybe people constantly
make assumptions that just aren't true.

Well,
all of those reasons are why I'm doing an FAQ section. Hopefully,
it'll set some things straight about Pocket
Monsters, myself, and any other
questions you may have. I realize that a lot of people don't
really
read these things (I never read them whenver I go to other people's
websites)
so I want to thank everyone who takes the time out to read this.

Tell us
about yourself!Well...where
do I start? I'm a 25-year old college graduate with a B.A. in
Linguistics (with minors in French and Anthropology). I currently
work as an English teacher in Japan, and I plan to be here for a few
years.

Aside from Pocket Monsters, I'm a big fan of
animation from both Japan and the U.S. I also love video games,
but I have a really bad habit of buying new games even though I have a
stack of about a half a dozen games that I should probably get around
to finishing first. My favorite genre of game is RPGs, and I
also love the games in the Mario
and Resident Evil series.

Other
hobbies? Well, I've also studied French, so I like to practice
that every now and then. I listen to a lot of hiphop and R&B
and other top 40 stuff, in addition to some Japanese music. I
guess my favorite Japanese group would be m-flo even if their lyrics
are absolute garbage...I guess I'm a sucker for cool beats and
off-the-wall music videos. I also tend to spend too much time on
Facebook.

Do you live
in Japan?
Are you fluent in Japanese?I do live in Japan
now, but I'm not originally from here. The reason I know Japanese
is that I had tried to
teach myself the language while in high school (my high school didn't
offer
Japanese...you only had Spanish and French to choose from). I
taught myself hiragana and katakana, which is why
I could translate some little stuff for the site, and it really makes
my
Japanese classes in college. After taking all the classes my
school had to offer, I studied for a year in Japan, and that's where I
learned the majority of my Japanese from.

Now, I'm back in Japan,
trying to become better at the language so I can become a professional
translator some day.

Where do
you get your
Japanese episodes from?Years
ago, this would have been a tough question. Before the days of
#pocket_monsters and #cartoon_world, we fans only had a random
selection of 3rd generation VHS tapes to choose from.
I would meet a random fan online, find out he or she had some episodes
I didn't have, and I'd try to work out some sort of arrangement to get
a copy.

Nowadays, though, you can find pretty much every episode of Pokemon online, both Japanese and
English. I generally don't support downloading episodes from the
Internet, but I'd like to think that the fact I buy the DVD's being
released by Viz and 4Kids sort of cancels out the harm I do by
downloading episodes to my computer.

Why
do you say that
Pokemon is evil!? Pokemon is not racist or morally bad or any of
that stuff!!!I get this a lot
more than
I should. Basically, these e-mails are usually written in a
size-36
font with horrible grammar and spelling, so I believe that they're
coming
from little kids who don't know any better. Basically, they're
looking
at the Pokemon Bashing page and taking
everything
as being my opinion, that I'm
the one calling Pokemon racist and evil and the work of Lucifer.
I'm not. These are the opinions of other people, whether they're
parents,
ministers, teachers, or whatever. I thought that everything was
spelled
out clearly...such as the fact that what they're saying is in written
in a smaller
font placed in a yellow box that's centered on each page. But I
guess it isn't clear enough. So let me spell it out for those
of you who are confused: in the Pokemon
Bashing
Section, everything that's written like this:

Pokemon is
evil. It
is the work of the devil. It teaches your children to be
anti-social
and bloodthirsty killers. You should join us in burning all
pokemon
merchandise so that we can cleanse the earth of these demons. Bla
bla bla bla bla bla...

...is the opinion
of somebody
else. So don't go e-mailing me about how wrong I am about pokemon
being evil or whatnot.

Can
you tell me how
to get [this pokemon] in [this game]?Sorry, but I don't
know
everything about the games, nor do I have the time to answer questions
about it. If you really need help, head on over to Game
FAQ's to have your questions answered.

Read my
fanfic!
Look at the pokemon I created!Sorry, but I don't
read
fanfics. I was just never big into reading stories done by fans
that
are, more often than not, absolutely nothing like the show they're
trying
to emulate. "But mine's different, mine's really good!" I
don't
care; I still won't read it. I know that this sounds really mean
and harsh, but I have enough official stuff to go through (in
addition
to work and the rest of my life) to spend the time reading some story
about Ash and Misty finally proclaiming their love for one another.